On beyond Anglicans

Letlapa Mphahlele with Ginn Fourie, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April 2003.

One project I've been working on here with Ginn Fourie and the Lyndi Fourie Foundation has been to figure out a way to market the DVD a documentary filmmaker has produced about her story to American audiences.

When I first watched the film, I knew right away that American audiences would have a difficult time following the narrative. The documentary traces the parallel stories of Ginn Fourie, whose daughter was killed in a massacre in 1993, and Letlapa Mphahlele, the Pan-African Congress military leader who authorized the killing. After many years, the two met and became close, forming the foundation in Ginn's daughter's name to work for forgiveness and conciliation in South Africa. Much of the film's story is told in first-person narration by Ginn and Letlapa. The problem arises there; while Ginn's accent is tricky to understand in a few places, Letlapa's speech is unintelligible nearly all the way through. I usually have a fairly easy time understanding non-native English speakers, but even I was at a complete loss. I knew that the DVD could not possibly work for Americans unless it had subtitles.

And so if Ginn were able to get subtitles on the DVD, then we have to think about what groups to market to. I had the idea of focusing on churches, given the explicit religious and biblical overlay that exists in much of Ginn's discussion of forgiveness in the film. But as I was watching, I realized that the piece assumes a certain level of fluency in the political history of South Africa over the last twenty years, something few Americans have. In order to understand Ginn's story, and the specific motivations for her acts of forgiveness, you have to understand apartheid, the freedom struggle, and the specific circumstances that led up to her daughter's death.

From this realization, I decided that the most viable option would be to develop a 4-6-week adult Sunday School course with the film as a centerpiece. The sessions would move chronologically through a basic history of South Africa, examine how the Bible was used to justify and uphold apartheid as well as how the Bible was read and deployed in the struggle against apartheid, and review the events of the freedom struggle that led up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela. The course would then look at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and begin to take up issues of forgiveness, whether violence is ever justified by oppression, and the relationship between the terms amnesty, forgiveness, and reconciliation. At this point, the film would be introduced as a starting point for a Simon-Wiesenthal-esque "What would you do?" conversation.

In this particular world, I have something of value I can offer to Ginn and the foundation. I know the world of churches. I teach adult Sunday school. I know what people will respond to, and I know that they will respond to this story. And so I will put together a curriculum, a plan of four or six lessons culminating in the DVD, and start searching for ways to advertise package, which would include written materials and visual aids for each session along with the DVD itself, to churches in the United States for a modest donation to the foundation. If any of my church-connected friends out there know of any networks or have any tested ideas on doing this, I would love to hear from you. Otherwise, the first order of business will probably be to play up Desmond Tutu's role and market first to the Anglicans.

In fact, an unsuspecting group of Anglicans in Franklin, Tennessee, is about to become the test-group for the course in mid-September. I am contracted to teach adult Sunday school at St. Paul's Episcopal Church next school year, so it will be a good chance to gauge interest, integrate suggestions, see what kind of comments and questions I get from the group. Please be in touch if you have any ideas or know of any group or organization that might be interested in the course. The history of South Africa, the use and misuse/abuse of the Bible, and the stories around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have a broad appeal that transcend denomination and faith tradition. I will start with Anglicans because that's what I know, but I believe that any religious group would find real value in this presentation of South Africa's history and the theological implications of oppression and the fight for freedom.

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